One of the common threads in many s/f authors' careers is a novel which takes on the big question: God and religion. A cursory mental review will turn up a number of novels addressing the issue by the leading lights of sf & f, including a number of novels by Herbert, Blish's A Case of Conscience, multiple works of C.S. Lewis, the Mormon-informed works of Orson Scott Card, and even Mark Twain. In Escape from Heaven, the approach is a humorous one, with a hefty dose of roman a clef. Astute libertarian readers will recognize authors and concepts both subtly and unsubtly disguised in this novel and, in cases such as Ayn Rand, C.S. Lewis, H.L. Mencken, General George S. Patton, Thomas Jefferson, and Robert A. Heinlein, not disguised at all. Readers who are familiar with Los Angeles will equally recognize many of the settings.

A basic plot summary (any errors of overconciseness are regretted): Duj Pepperman, a radio talk show host in Los Angeles, receives an on-air call from God and comes to find out that he is needed in Heaven because the Almighty is in big trouble. It turns out that civil war is about to break out in Heaven (which will influence the Earth and God needs Duj because Duj is God's backup copy! It seems that over the eons, God has created others, including splitting off a part of himself as a female companion and together, they "spun off" Jesus. To make a long story short, Lucifer/ Satan/Eve, another creation, is Jesus's ex-wife, setting the stage for a truly Manichean struggle between "good" and "evil." (Hell, by the way, which Eve/Satan/Lucifer created as a place of her own, turns out to be a totalitarian state of enforced absolute uniformity). This struggle ends up assuming the form of an election between God/Jesus/Adam and Lucifer/Satan/Eve, to be held simultaneously over the entire earth. The climax of the novel occurs during a debate, before the election, broadcast worldwide on a televised talk show, between Jesus/Adam and Satan/Eve. Without giving anything away, I think that readers will enjoy the particular human quality involved which influences the outcome of this ultimate confrontation. Who wins the debate? That would be telling.

In my not-so-humble opinion, LFS members will highly enjoy this novel. It is full of the jokes, puns, and outrageous concepts joyfully explored which will have a strong appeal to the libertarian reader as well as a more general audience. (I recommended it to two Christian evangelical types while I was waiting to change planes in Kansas City last month.) This novel doesn't purport to explain it all to you, rather, it takes you along for a wild intellectual ride. Excape from Heaven is thus far from mundane.